Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch

Between Scribes and Authors: On Three Exceptional Manuscripts of the Descriptio Terrae Sanctae

Mor Hajbi — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This paper focuses on accounts of travel to the Holy Land, and speciﬁcally on one of the most inﬂuential texts in this body of literature: Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, written circa 1283. It analyses three case studies from the ﬁfteenth century, where later editors updated the Descriptio based on their own experience in the Holy Land. The paper argues that the writers corrected or updated the Descriptio as a service to their ﬁfteenth-century audience, and at the same time used it to commemorate their own travels. It further emphasizes the editors’ role as creative agents, arguing that editors should, in certain cases, be recognized as authors. This paper thus contributes to the broader discourse on medieval categories of writing.

Die Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae im Wolfenbütteler Cod. Guelf. 354 Helmst.

Phillip Landgrebe — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Phillip Landgrebe: The Descriptiones Terrae Sanctae in the Wolfenbüttel Cod. Guelf. 354 Helmst.

The article focuses on the manuscript Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 354 Helmst. (Wo1), which is analysed in three steps. First, I examine which parts of the Descriptio Terrae Sanctae by Burchard of Mount Sion and the related travel account by Johannes Poloner can be found in the manuscript. Second, I characterize and categorize the manuscripts that use Wo1 as an exemplar, to outline key feature of its reception. Third, drawing on the ﬁrst two steps, I review some hypotheses about the life and work of Johannes Poloner.

Am Rand. Marginalien in Handschriften der Descriptio Terrae Sanctae

Manon Koch — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Manon Koch: Marginal notes. Annotations in manuscripts of the Descriptio Terrae Sanctae

This paper asks how marginal annotations found in the manuscripts of Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae can illuminate the text’s production, reception, and intended functions over the centuries. The paper argues that marginalia can reveal the evolving purposes of the text and illuminate the interactions between its readers and its depiction of the Holy Land. Employing Claudine Moulin’s multidi-mensional approach, the marginalia of four manuscripts from Rubin’s d family, linked to medieval Florence, are analysed as examples. After a description that emphasizes the uniqueness of the marginal annotations, the author delves into these ﬁndings, demonstrating how they can facilitate an exploration of the individual manuscripts’ histories.
Furthermore, marginalia provide a lens through which we can discern the functions that Burchard’s work might have served during its production and throughout its reception. The paper concludes that further examination of marginalia in Burchard’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae has exceptional potential to enhance our understanding of its material and intellectual history. Moreover, the development of this methodological approach could enable its application to additional travel accounts and descriptions of the Holy Land.

Descriptions of Holy Land Sites and Monuments in Different Manuscript Versions of Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae

Denys Pringle — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The stemma recently established by Jonathan Rubin of the relationship between the surviving manuscripts of the longer version of Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio identiﬁes ﬁve families (a–e), which form a sequential chain, albeit with no direct relationship identiﬁable between any two of them. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the differences in the accounts of Burchard’s visits to and descriptions of Holy Land sites provided by the manuscripts from Zwickau (Zw3) and London (Lo2), together with their respective families of related texts (a and b), assessing what changes might have been made by Burchard himself rather than by subsequent copyists. The accounts of visits to sites and monuments conﬁrm that both family a and family b contain material attributable to Burchard that is not found in the other, while the account of St Mary of Carmel given in family c also raises the possibility of other revisions having been made, apparently by another hand, before the fall of Acre and the loss of the Dominican house there in 1291.

A Few Remarks on the Transmission of Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae

Paolo Trovato — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The paper discusses some problematic and noteworthy aspects of the manuscript tradition of the Descriptio Terrae Sanctae on the basis of recent works by John Bartlett, Jonathan Rubin and Ingrid Baumgärtner.

Bruno Roy (1935 – 2025)

Wilken Engelbrecht — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Nachruf für Bruno Roy (1935 – 2025) von Wilken Engelbrecht

Textual Tradition and Reception of Burchard’s Descriptio Terrae Sanctae

Ingrid Baumgärtner , Jonathan Rubin — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The introduction presents some key problems related to the textual tradition and reception of Burchard of Mount Sion’s Descriptio Terrae
Sanctae.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200